Remember 'superhero fatigue'? Avengers: Doomsday just passed a million presales — with no IMAX

The estimate comes from tracker ThatWaluigiDude, relayed through r/boxoffice and picked up November 4: Avengers: Doomsday has sold more than a million advance tickets, six weeks out from its December 18 opening. The figure is a tracker estimate rather than a Disney announcement, and it sits on top of a presale run that's been setting records since July — $16.5 million in the first 24 hours, roughly double Deadpool & Wolverine's first day, and $40 million domestic with 100 days still to go, a mark Spider-Man: Brand New Day didn't hit until about 40 days out.

Now the handicap. Those million tickets were sold without a single IMAX seat among them, because Dune: Part Three opens the same day and holds IMAX exclusivity for the first three weeks of the run. A commenter on r/boxoffice framed the absurdity:

"And to think, this movie has no IMAX until January and another anticipated fantasy movie opening on the same day."

Denis Villeneuve shot his finale for those screens and locked them up before Marvel's tickets ever went on sale. He won the IMAX war outright — and on the evidence of the presale charts, where one tracker has Doomsday outselling Dune at three-to-four tickets to one, Marvel barely registered the loss.

The narrative that didn't survive the year

What makes the number fun is the conversation it buried. A second commenter remembered where these same threads were in the spring:

"To be fair, only like 5 months ago were the narratives that superhero fatigue/marvel fatigue were a real thing. Which like dominated the conversation about the MCU as a whole."

Five months ago was June, when Supergirl opened to $38 million and limped to roughly $125 million worldwide on a $170 million budget. "Superhero fatigue" was the default explanation for everything, and expecting big things from Doomsday got you downvoted in the same subreddit now posting its presale milestones.

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Then July happened. Brand New Day opened to a record $360 million domestic and became the first solo superhero film past $2 billion; Doomsday put up its record first day the same month. The diagnosis was never fatigue with the genre — audiences were tired of specific movies, and they vote title by title.

In June, the flop was Supergirl and the diagnosis was superhero fatigue. By November, Doomsday had an estimated million tickets sold — without IMAX.

For the reader planning a trip: the Caesar-sized screens come back to Marvel in January, when Dune's window lapses. Until then, a million people have decided the regular auditorium will do.

Previously we wrote: The Gilded Age's railroad tycoon is rumored to be Marvel's next Magneto — of course he controls steel